The great autobiography, completed in 1929 while the Mahatma was still engaged in the toughest moral battles of his life. Whether pondering on the virtues of a diet of nuts and seeds or chronicling his formative adventures as a lawyer in South Africa, this book is pure inspiration.

A postmodern novelist's controversial chronicle of the buildup to World War Two suggests that the disaster was far from inevitable, and that the blame for 30 million deaths extends far beyond Nazi Germany.

It's impossible to understand the conflict between Iran and the USA without knowing what happened in 1953, when a covert CIA operation overthrew Iran's democratically elected government to preserve access to oil.

Harvard professor and research psychologist Steven Pinker has a provocative thesis: despite the well-known horrors of current geo-politics, the world is becoming less violent. This surprising book offers a new reason for hope.

You've probably read it before ... and you need to read it again. Barbara Tuchman's brilliant chronicle of Europe's grand and foolish procession from peace and prosperity to brutal total war in 1914 is a pillar of pacifist thought, demonstrating the comical ineptitude of men entrusted with the responsibility to lead the world.